Brisbane Lions record massive financial loss

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Brisbane have confirmed a loss of almost $1.9 million at the end of a tough year for the AFL club. The Lions managed a trading profit of $498,185, but depreciation and interest costs meant a net operating loss of $1,855,926.

“While the loss was in line with expectations, it is certainly not what this club wants nor should accept as we build a sustainable business model engineered to achieve long-term success,” chairman Angus Johnson said.

The Lions fell from 13th to 15th on the ladder this year, winning only four games, and also sacked key forward Brendan Fevola in February.

Johnson said their poor on-field performance had a direct impact on the club’s financial result.

Jaji
Like every season, the news is always mixed, clubs on the up, clubs on the down, some treading water.

So far Collingwood, Hawthorn and Essendon have announced profits for 2011 of around the $2 mill mark.

Melbourne and the Bulldogs have alse announced profits despite having poor seasons. I would expect the West Coast and Geelong to also announce decent profits, and probably Carlton, maybe Freo.

Brisbane, North, Port and Adelaide have announced losses so far, and Brisbane’s is probably at the upper range, but I don’t think anyone involved in footy would be surprised by the size of the loss, indeed, it’s probably a decent result given Brisbanes consistently poor on-field results over the last few years and the introduction of the Suns.

An important point to note is that there is a big difference bertween a $1.8 million loss on $32 million of revenue, and a $1.8 million loss on revenue of around $5 million.

In relation to those players going to Arizona for altitude training, there’s a hilarious comment from a Courier reader, who asks: ” Is there any sort of training Merrett can do to stop him arriving too late every time his opponent takes a mark? Also is there a way he can be taught to stop slipping over in the Goal square 5 times a week? ”

I’m not sure any amount of altitude training will fix that particular problem!

It should also be noted that the brisbane rugbly league club and the broncos leagues club are two separate entities (the leagues club last year earning 23 million on its own). As such it could be construed that the broncos combined entities mae more than the Lions by 6 million – on last years figures. the reality is that last year the broncos made 26 million, with a 400k sponsorship from their associated leagues club. they have separate governance and are separate bodies.

That’s a pretty impressive number, I wonder how many of those are actually from Western Sydney. There is alot of publicity around in the news & the papers on the GWS team, so the AFL are true to their word on spending big to make it work, definately a long term project & a lot of hard work ahead.

Of the 12,100 foundation members this year, the breakdown was a bit of an eye-opener:

* a tick over 5,000 were from the ACT (or 42%)
* a tick over 3,000 were from councils that could be described as being part of metropolitan Western Sydney (or 25%)
* the remainder, or about one-third, were from the remainder of Australia, mostly regional NSW, but there was a sizeable 700 from Victoria.

On the face of it, 3,000 looks small (I think it is small), but the GWS response is positive in that it’s one year ahead of the team actually playing games and it’s an area that doesn’t have a strong membership culture.

Personally, I think the memberships will be back around the 12,000 mark, maybe reaching 13k, with the ACT component matching the Western Sydney component.

Its quite impressive when you consider that Gold Coast met the 10k target members around the same time, and went on to 14k members for their first year. While one suspects 17k is optimistic, I wouldnt be surprised to see them hit somewhere between 12 and 15k

Call me outrageous, call me very optomystic, cal me unrealistic, but i think GWS will have around 17,000, 18,000 members, i think Western Sydney will embrace GWS far more than many people imagine.

There is no membership culture at all in WS, i could be wrong but dont Penrith RL club have only around 4,000 members. ( not the poker machine club)

I think as the season comes around, a hell of a lot more WS people will get on board, last years members are not entirely representative of the type of fan that the club will have when they actually play a game in the AFL.

IF it’s long term the AFL may benifit, also there is huge amount of publicity in Sydney with Eddie Mcquire & Kevin Sheedy. I suppose most people in Sydney still equate Mcquire with ‘who wants to a millionare’ & to me Kevin Sheedy is the Everton footballer, but he too is not really well known in this country’s no 1 city..

It would help with a few well known players, I think only Gary Ablett, Chris Judd & that Buddy Franklin guy are about the only well known Aussie rules players outside of the Swans that Sydney people would recognise.

They should just rename GWS to GWSC Giants (Greater West Sydney & Canberra) Giants considering the majority of there membership is from the ACT 42%, plus the memberships in Victoria & Perth I feel are just those supporting for the sake of supporting the new team to help the ’cause’. So in reality in West Sydney only they got a long way to go and I wish them the best in carving there niche there, the NRL clubs there got nothing to worry about.

Don’t forget Izzy! I mean, that’s the real reason he was signed up, he’s a face people recognise, plus he is quite popular (he might yet come good out on the footy field, but not next year). The GWS signings so far, they are known by AFL fans, but they don’t have any currency at all out of AFL circles.

What is the definition of a member. My understanding for the NRL you must pay so that you attend games. I find it hard to believe that the Giants would have more members than Penrith RL club. Not sure but I heard somewhere that if you attend one of their clinics you automatically become a junior member. Numbers sound great but they need to be real supporters not casual observers

this year The Giants sold around 12,100 “foundation” memberships at $50 a pop (family memberships of 2 adults and 2 children were $100 a pop).

This was nothing more than to guage interest in the club – it didn’t really entitle you to anything except you get first dibs at purchasing the best seats in the house (both at Skoda Stadium and at Manuka for the Canberra members). The Giants will subtract your $50 or $100 from the cost of your membership for 2012.

Nothing more can be read into it, it’s just a bit of marketing exercise at the end of the day – and in starting up a new club, there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing any of that – you have to start somewhere.

I believe they will end up with between 12,000 to 14,000 memberships in their first season, and about 40% to 50% of those will be Canberra based.

This necessarily means that the average value of the memberships will be quite low.

No point in anyone getting excited either way – it’s a new club feeling it’s way, it’s going to try things, yes, it will probably give away stacks of junior memberships, and why not?

GWS might still be struggling along in 20 years time, around the same size of the Suns, or it might have outgrown the Swans by then – no one really knows.

Club revenues in the AFL were in the low $20M only 3 or 4 years ago, and now a few clubs are posting $40M turnovers. I expect the Blues to hit the $50M next year, still way behind Collingwood or Hawthorn but quite respectable. Most clubs in the AFL have been investing in new income streams over the last 2 to 3 years (like Brisbane) and the results will be start to show up in the next few years.